cub fandom
Listen, and understand.
What’s there to say, really?
…hmm, a lot, actually. I’ll spare you the 2003 reminiscing and just ask my question. Someone, please, answer me.
So in ‘03, we choked in Game 6, big time. GAME 6…of a SEVEN GAME SERIES. What stopped us from winning Game 7? No, seriously. WHAT? I still don’t really know. “Because we’re the Cubs,” blah blah blah, spare me. That’s not an answer. WHAT. STOPPED. US?
2008. October 1. OK, Dempster got in a spot…in GAME 1. We fell behind and got demoralized. IN GAME ONE. HELLO! 4 MORE GAMES TO PLAY! What was stopping this team, the best Cubs team in my memory and my father’s memory and his father’s memory, from just, you know, PLAYING? Believing in themselves? I’m serious, WHAT? Can someone please tell me?
You know, though? Here is the even more real question. Was it the same thing? In 2003 and 2008? Who cares, losing is losing, you say. I disagree. The answer matters, and I’ll tell you why. 2003 was a gift. Everything came together in that lucky once-in-a-blue-moon way, and it was magical, and it woulda been magical if we’d gone all the way, but something happened. In immediate hindsight the Game 6 choke seemed easily explained: lack of playoff experience, lack of big-game experience, tripped players up. And as chokes do, it spread, in a series of bad decisions and bad luck and Golden Glovers misplaying ground balls and coaches not taking out finished pitchers and spazzy outfielders and ugh, ugh!
Sorry. Note, though: the failure was contained. Contained within the game–the NLDS was thrillingly fought, the NLCS until that point was also. If you like, you can further argue that the failure due to inexperience was contained, within the season. It didn’t say anything about the Cubs as a franchise, despite what people thought. It was just a year. Disappointing sure, but it was just what sometimes happens to teams that improbably fight their way to the playoffs. The Marlins did the same, and just got a little farther. It happens–that’s why we have a postseason at all. Right?
2008? This year was different. THIS YEAR WAS DIFFERENT. We were plain good. We clinched over a week before the end of the season. Best NL record. Most runs in NL. God knows how many other bests, firsts, best since’s; I’m bad at keeping track of that stuff. But it was a Cubs team like none of us have ever seen. And that team just didn’t fucking show up for the most important series of the season. Here’s what freaks me out, here’s what kept me up last night: if THIS team couldn’t pull it off, what Cub team can? How good do we have to be to make this happen?
(Maybe making it happen isn’t about being good. Maybe it was too easy. Maybe you need to fight all the way, like in ‘03. ?)
Here is the emotional doublethink that defines my Cub fandom*. Deep down I have a core of hope and belief that they can do it. But I also have a core of doubt and resignation to loss. And I never know which one is deeper. Which is the core of which? I can’t tell. Maybe I should call it doublefeel.
*Maybe it’s everyone’s fandom, for all teams. But I don’t remember feeling this way about the 1990s Bulls and I doubt Yankee fans feel this way.
Maybe that’s the difference between 2003 and 2008. I was at the 2003 NLCS Game 7. Not 24 hours after the Game 6 choke, I made and carried a sign to the park that said just “I BELIEVE”. Why COULDN’T we win? WHY NOT come back from a bad game? That was the day before! That’s why it’s not a one-game playoff, the postseason, because a bad inning, an off day, can happen anytime. I believed. But that was the heart speaking. In my head, I could see us being outplayed, in slow motion. You knew that a debacle like that wouldn’t happen to the Marlins. And, doublefeel-wise, when the loss finally came, it felt both shocking and inevitable.
This year was the other way around. Rationality was on the side of optimism. For once, for ONCE, we were just that good. Look at the numbers! But you can’t turn off that emotional side that is keeping you on the edge of cynicism and defeat.
So this is mostly just shocking. No, really. “Durr, it’s the Cubs, what do you expect” people will say. Well, I’ll tell you. More. I expect more. Because it’s expecting less that makes people think jokes about lovable losers are acceptable. This looked to be the year we left all that bullshit behind.
OK, you know? I was feeling maudlin. I couldn’t get to sleep last night til 2:30 (apparently neither could Mark DeRosa). Today, I had listened to the Steve Goodman song I linked to up there, I sat down to write this, catharsis, etc…and now I’m just pissed. This year WAS different, goddamnit.
See you in '09
Postscript: As usual, Al says it better. Wanting it too much…is it that simple?
We call this place heaven.
Damnit, you can’t read that at all can you. What it says is: at one location, you can get a plain ol’ hot dog, a “Nats dog value pack,” a Hebrew National, AND a Ben’s half smoke with chili. That’s right, no need to stand in line at the one Ben’s stand in LF. And hilariously, NOT ONLY are these “Nats Dogs” badged stands everywhere, there is one AROUND THE CORNER from the Ben’s stand.
Lotsa snapshots of the stadium coming up. I am so psyched.
some kind of rubicon
A genetic test for the variant I published on last year is now available.
OK so that’s the background, now:
Not sure how I feel about this. Or even what to say. Well, I should get to work anyway. Finding the next gene 
brain freeze explained
Why do we get “brain freeze” when we eat something cold?
-Christina Zuniga, via e-mailMark A. W. Andrews, professor of physiology and director of the Independent Study Pathway at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, replies:
This commonly experienced pain, also known as an ice cream headache, results from quickly eating or drinking very cold substances. Officially termed sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (talk about a painful mouthful!), it is the direct result of the rapid cooling and rewarming of the blood vessels in the palate, or the roof of the mouth. A similar but painless blood vessel response causes the face to appear “flushed” after being outside on a cold day. In both instances, the cold temperature causes blood vessels to constrict and then experience extreme rebound dilation as they warm up again.
In the palate, this dilation is sensed by nearby pain receptors, which then send signals back to the brain via the trigeminal nerve, one of the major nerves of the facial area. This nerve also senses facial pain, so as the signals are conducted the brain interprets the pain as coming from the forehead—the same “referred pain” phenomenon seen in heart attacks. Brain-freeze pain may last from a few seconds to a few minutes, which is blissfully short as compared with the duration of its cousin, the migraine headache. Research suggests that the same vascular mechanism and nerve implicated in brain freeze cause the aura (sensory disturbance) and pulsatile (throbbing pain) phases of migraines. Interestingly, it is impossible to give yourself an ice cream headache in cold weather—only in a warm ambient temperature will it hurt to wolf down a banana split.
Fortunately, abstaining from ice cream is not necessary. Placing the tongue hard against the palate may help, as will eating cold foods more slowly or warming food in the front of your mouth before swallowing.
Don’t you feel so much better now!!?! I do.
I think I went to college with Tryst
They are playing Morphine’s album Cure for Pain. What year was I….a junior?…at the end of the semester I started spending time with a woman I’ll call B. I have NO IDEA how we found each other, classes? friend of a friend? Anyway, her two obsessive loves were Morphine (the band) and Aliens. She had the director’s cut and knew bits of trivia about it that were very obscure in 1996…now, of course, you can find them all on IMDB. (Kids, we used to have to fight for the knowledge that made us cool and/or geeks. Also? We had to spend money on music, either directly or by buying tapes to copy from friends. Also? We couldn’t even really copy movies since double VCR decks were a lot rarer than double tape decks, so if you had a copied movie it was probably taped off TV. Also? Get off my lawn.) Anyway, Tryst. They do this to me all the time, what with the music.
Ah, B. Why was I so interested in you? I think we shared a level of snark. Also a level of depression. For the last few weeks of the semester we spent many hours in her basement cave of a dorm room listening to Morphine or watching Aliens while not really having sex. There was a degree of sneaking around involved as she hid me from her hallmates (and hid herself from herself). It was all very tension-filled and dramatic for reasons I just cannot remember. The end of semesters was always a hothouse in some way. Girls, depression, euphoria…something was always going on, at a much more intense level than usual, for everyone on campus, me included. Unsurprising I suppose. So yeah, things with B were intense. And then we went home for break and that was that. We never really spoke again.
I swore off straight girls soon after, but she wasn’t the final reason, just one of the nails. (Heh. Nails. Oh wait! IIRC B also liked Nine Inch Nails.) The next summer, I innocently tried to get in the pants of C, a very cute, bubbly woman who lived on my hall in the summer dorm. In retrospect, I think she was from Minnesota. She was one of those happy straight girls who thinks they are just being nice to everyone, but in the outside world that everyone else lives in they are madly flirting with everything that moves. I flirted back, as you do. C realized she was in fact attracted to me, but she was 1) very Baha’i (Baha’i are as anti-gay as any other denomination, it turns out) and 2) very conflicted about her sexuality. Needless to say, perhaps, I never got into those pants. Instead I witnessed epic levels of angst and soul-searching. I felt bad for the girl, here I was just wanting a little fun, and I make her question her faith and very identity. Sheesh. Also perhaps needless to say, she came out f’reals a few months later. Hey — no need to thank me. Glad I could help!
Haven’t listened much to Morphine since. As I have now been given the chance to remember, they do get a bit repetitive. I don’t seem to have them in the ol’ iTunes, seeing as how — see above — I only had them on tape. I did see them in concert once. My review: I didn’t know you could be that high and still hold an instrument.
I do, however, own the director’s cut of Aliens. Outright. It’s one of my two desert island movies. I mostly watch it at night…mostly.
(You can expect more college reminisces between now and my 10th reunion in June.)
What I got
In early November of 2000, I was in New Orleans at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference. My boyfriend had come along, and we were staying in a beautiful bed-and-breakfast that, needless to say, was NOT on the conference hotels list. It was the internet boom–we ate so well that, to this day, our friends are sick of hearing about this trip. The election was going on–you may recall the election of November 2000 and how, er, stimulating it was. It was my first conference, my first presentation, and I was utterly psyched. SFN is infamous for its size (over 25,000 attendees) and its scope (”neuroscience” can mean almost anything, and at this conference, it does). All the posters and science to see and absorb…and then in the evening, all the ancillary events. Panels, interest groups, receptions, and I belonged there. Everything was possible.
As was my wont, I went to a career panel. I knew even during my undergrad years that academia was not for me, and that I was interested in an “alternative career” (a disgusting ivory tower phrase for the outside world, IMO). Of course, being an idiot who went to grad school for only the dimmest of reasons, I had no idea what I wanted beyond that. So I tried to go to a lot of panels and read a lot of books about “alternative careers.” This panel was not specifically about that–it was intended to present the diversity of options that would lay before me someday in the distant future. Good enough. I vaguely remember that it had a representative from the classic academia tenure track, a science writer, and somebody else–probably a researcher/administrator from industry or biotech.
But I CLEARLY remember the man who represented science policy. He described his days as a science and technology policy fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He had worked in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which did what it sounds like it’d do: assess technology for Congress. An intertube describes it this way: “The OTA was created in 1972 to provide Congress objective analyses of major public policy issues related to scientific and technological change.” A Congresscritter would come to them and ask for a report on any topic under the sun. They’d research it and write it up in a nonpartisan fashion. Another quote:
Holt pointed out how many of the OTA reports, from over a decade ago, are still timely and pertinent, including reports like “Retiring old cars: Programs to save gasoline and reduce emissions,” “Renewing our energy future,” “Potential environmental impacts of bioenergy crop production,” “Innovation and commercialization of emerging technologies,” and “Testing in America’s schools: Asking the right questions.”
This sounded like pure heaven. Then, as now, I was a dilettante, interested in too many things, and I was beginning to see just how fucking stupid I had been to go to graduate school, the entire POINT of which is to train you in specialization. The idea that I could grow up and use my prospective science and research skillz to tackle all sorts of different projects–and for a purpose? To a specific end? (I was also beginning to realize that my penchant for efficiency might have been useful day-to-day, but could never have a place in research as a lifelong endeavour.) Turns out the guy was there specifically to promote the AAAS Science Policy Fellowship that had gotten him to OTA. One needed one’s Ph.D. in hand to apply. Still, I took the application packet and read it cover to cover.
I did the same thing at my next conference, and the next, and at local panels, and eventually I was going to panels and I already knew everything they were saying about the fellowships. When I’d network and discuss science policy, I’d hear about the fellowships and how many doors they opened. In dark research moments I’d read about science policy and notice that nearly everything I read was written by a former fellow. While writing my dissertation, I found an ad for a related job in the back of the journal Science, cut it out and taped it in the “escapism” corner of my desk, near the photos of Paris and the ocean at Sharm el-Sheikh (a resort in Egypt where my sister had spent a summer). When considering jobs, the fact that my current job would put me in DC, where I would have top networking opportunities and learn incredible amounts purely by osmosis, was a consideration.
When I got here, I picked every brain I knew, developed my network, picked their brains, and then asked THEM for people whose brains I could pick. And picked them. All of them said the same thing. You must apply for the AAAS fellowship, it’s invaluable, it’s great, it’s perfect experience and perfect for the resume. They all said it was very competitive and then said they had gotten it on the first try. They all took great pride in telling me a particular insider “secret” about the system, such that when I spoke to a new person and I heard them get quieter and conspiratorial, I knew what was coming. I acted surprised each time.
The time finally came: my career had reached a turning point. I was on top of my field and had to either fight to stay there or bow out. The deadlines and start dates and end dates of my commitments and the fellowship lined up perfectly. So I applied. I came out to my boss as an alternative-career lover. I converted valuable research-world patrons into references in fields where they were virtually unknown. I spent valuable research time, time that our rivals were using to do science, writing my application. I doubted my decision when research went well, stood by it when not. I wrote and wrote and wrote about myself (the app was an essay, a CV, another essay, and a biography). I asked for help from aforementioned network. When they started giving me contradictory advice based on their personalities, I knew I had worked it for all it was worth. I sent it in and I waited. I got an interview and one last hoop: write a one-page memo about something and in the interview you will present it and we will ask questions. I sat down to write the memo and I realized that, after all these years of saying “I want to do science policy,” I didn’t know what “policy” meant. I figured it out. I sent it in. I interviewed.
I got the email at noon today: I got the fellowship. Now it’s 8. And I have no idea what to do now.
I GOT IT
I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IY I GOT IT I GOT IT I GO IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT IG OT IT I GOT IT!
Loophole
Well well well, I suppose the DC-based Emperors’ Club whores juuust weren’t good enough for Mr. NY governor. Typical NYC thinking, “we are the center of the world and better than everywhere else.” Well, neener neener neener, look where your NYC snobbery has landed you. Ha!
However, all may not be lost, Governor John. I have spotted a loophole.
The Mann Act, passed by Congress in 1910 to address prostitution, human trafficking and what was viewed at the time as immorality in general, makes it a crime to transport someone between states for the purpose of prostitution.
a-HA! DC IS NOT A STATE!
rap + excel = teh hilarious
Via strange maps — a very cool blog — I find this:
Turns out this is a Thing: making Excel graphs of rap/hiphop lyrics. This page has the most comprehensive collection I’ve found.
I seem to be late to this meme, but jesus. I haven’t laughed this hard since I first found LOLcats. Here’s the one that got me the worst:
Of course I have been trying to think of my own. Here’s what I got:
a big bouquet of cactus
A Leonard Cohen phase is coming on. I can feel it. My iPod is presently about 75% hiphop; that percentage has been creeping higher and higher over the last few months, and I’m reaching saturation. This is how I do music: several months of immersion in an artist or genre, then on to either the next thing or revisit an old thing and immerse in that. (I’ll have to make it back in time for Mr. tha Funkee Homosapien’s concert at the 9:30, though.)
Cohen is, for me, an old thing. It dates back to around 1988. My mother had two albums on heavy rotation: Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat and Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man. And when I say heavy rotation, I mean: NOTHING else in the CD player. Nothing. I was 12 years old and my family was on a nickname basis with the man (we called the first album “Jenny sings Lenny”). I looked high and low for a blue raincoat of my own (no luck, even now when I don’t want one anymore). And it wasn’t even young-poet-living-in-Greece “Suzanne” Leonard Cohen, but darker, aging, “Ain’t no cure for love” Leonard Cohen. That can’t have been good for my perceptions of romance and adult relationships. (Srsly. I was reading Bop and Seventeen, listening to Tiffany and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, and singing along to “Or I’d crawl to you baby and I’d fall at your feet/And I’d howl at your beauty like a dog in heat/And I’d claw at your heart and I’d tear at your sheets/And say please…(please…)”)
Still, those albums were my mom’s. They still feel that way. But when the tribute album “I’m Your Fan” came out…that was mine. REM! James! The PIXIES, fer chrissakes! Yeah, that’s the one I’ll put on my iPod first, it’s how I start. We’ll see where I go after that.
This all was inspired by stumbling upon this paper on my blogadventures today: “It Doesn’t Matter Which You Heard”: the Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. I know you’ve heard this song. THREE-YEAR-OLDS have heard this song. It’s a nice analysis of why, exactly, I know that you’ve heard the song.
Yeah, so I read that and my Cohen phase began. Since the internets it always seems to include reading this interview. I bring you an excerpt that always makes me smile. Have a good weekend, all.
MUSICIAN: I understand that somehow during the course of your travels you ended up in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
COHEN: … I went down there and immediately found myself accurately described as a “bourgeois individualist poet.” I said, “That’s right. Suits me to a tee.” I wrote a poem in one of my early books: “The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts Homeward.”
I was walking on the beach in the middle of one night and was suddenly surrounded by about 11 guys with Czechoslovakian submachine guns; I was an American who didn’t speak Spanish, and they thought I was the first guy off the landing boat. I was the first guy arrested. It was a bit tricky to sort this thing out. But they happened to be very gracious. Wherever they took me, by the end of the night we were drinking toasts to each other and “the friendship of the people,” and they let me go.
A little later it hit the newspapers in North America that the airport had been bombed. I’m in this little seedy hotel in Havana and somebody knocks on my door and says, “You have to go down to the Canadian consulate right away.” They don’t like the look of me there because I really do look like a Cuban revolutionary - I had a beard and wore khakis. Finally I’m brought in to one of the secretaries of the consulate - I’m pretending to be pretty tough. And he says to me, “Mr. Cohen. Your mother is very worried about you.”
The best feeling in research
When your experiment succeeds late on a Friday! Sends you home right!
(The worst feeling: well, you can figure it out.)
Aaaaah, what a nice feeling. I’ve been out of it, lab-wise, for weeks. This week I finally snap into what’s going on, step on people’s toes in my struggle to make them explain it to me, and in two days I’ve solved a problem that had been tripping the lab up for weeks.
That’s just how I roll.
(And now off I go to my phone-less, internet-less home, and neighbors who practice good wireless network security techniques. Damn them! Damn you, Verizon! Goodbye, sweet Internets…)
Love at first sight
So there I am, sitting in the Udvar-Hazy Big-Ass Hangar outside Dulles Airport. I’d been there for a few hours, wandering about with some of the DC flickrites. The floors are concrete, I wasn’t seeing anything; my feet hurt and I was discouraged. I looked up.
Ah, now THAT’S the stuff. Snap snap.
Wow, look at that baby. Have I ever seen anything so graceful?
You know…I’m no poet. Maybe it’s true what they say about the thousand words, so here. Just look at her.
Ah, there she goes. Keep your wings level, beautiful.
I scuttled around on the floor trying to get all kinds of other angles, but there was an SR-71 Blackbird in my damn way.
Did you know it’s the fastest plane in the world? Visitors to the Udvar-Hazy Center like to point this out. Heck, I was even doing it. (Mach 3.)
Out of my way, fools
I am NOT suffering your asses today.
We find the fool of the hour — there have been a lot today — on the pages of the Washington Post. He is a developer, with a corner property on the busiest intersection in DC’s “Chinatown” neighborhood. (I put that in quotes because it’s more accurately called “Chinablock” or “Chinamall.”) A major Metro station entrance is underneath the property.
Genius has put three large video screens on this building. AT&T commercials play 24 hours a day. They are so loud you can hear them before you are even out of the Metro station. The speakers are bad. The same ads play over and over. Even residents 10 stories above are kept awake.*
Here’s the fool part:
Miller said he remains committed to his vision for the corner. “Have you been to Times Square?” he asked. “It’s a mixture of light and activity, and what was the dregs of New York has become a tourist attraction.”
I can’t even think of a snark snarky enough to snarkumarrize what’s wrong with this.
Forces of reason, have your say:
Tim Tompkins, executive director of the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit group representing businesses, theaters and property owners, said he knows of no billboards in the heart of Manhattan that emit commercial audio.
“Even in Times Square, where there is no such thing as a bad advertisement, that might be a little much,” he said.
Hey! Fool! Even the Times Square dude thinks you are a fool. Out of my way!
———————————————————————–
* I feel them. I live in Adams Morgan. I’m used to cacophony–hell, I even LIKE it. But I’ll tell ya, there is a big difference between unceasing recorded sound and the intermittent noise of woo girls and sirens and screechy bus brakes (I call that stuff “the Crazy”). In my two-plus years in this apartment, I have only once been kept awake by noise from outside, and it was not a Crazy night. No, that night, for some reason, starting around 3, the McDonalds across the street turned its “go away, homeless people” sound system up to TOP VOLUME and played 1940s-crooners Christmas carols. It was not even Christmastime. Just when I thought I would gouge my eyes out with my earplugs (oh, I’d MAKE it work, you best believe), they switched…to easy listening. Love lift us up where we belong!
Superbowl Stupidblogging
6:30 Stupid truck ads. Centrifuges have to be balanced or they will not spin.
6:34 Stupid me. I put too much sour cream in Liz’s Evil Dip.
6:38 Rescinded! Checked the recipe, and that was the right amount of sour cream I put in. …wait, I’m still stupid for making it at all. My arteries clog whenever I look in its direction.
6:40 Stupid East Coast. As a Midwesterner, I hate it when sports playoffs come down to New York vs Boston. Give me a goddamn break. Red Giants vs. the New Yankees BLAH BLAH BLAH. There are OTHER RIVALRIES OUT THERE, yo. cubfan63 is rooting for “a tie with lots of injuries.” Me, I am rooting for the Giants, because I like the song they ran out on the field to better than I like the Patriots’ song. (Kanye West’s “Stronger” vs. some Black Sabbath or whatever.)
7:03 Stupid Derek Jeter.
7:24 Why are there always so many job site ads during Superbowls?
7:30 Racial stereotypes much, Bud Light?!
7:30:20 (I must remember that I am not the target demo for Anheuser-Busch.)
7:41 Justin Timberlake rocks.
8:04 OK, people were bitching about Prince’s guitar being too phallic??!
8:06 Srsly, though. It’s a FLYING PENIS. That pierced a pink heart.
8:32 The head-shrinker commercial made me laugh so hard I cried. Reaganite thinks I’m insane.
8:39 Maria Shriver endorsed Obama three days after Arnold endorsed McCain? (DC football.)
9:13 Ha! The Frist-Carville ad rocks. Those Segway tours are awesome.
9:39 One reason I seldom watch football is that it makes me feel 10 IQ points stupider.
9:44 Still laughing at the “tiny head” line from the cars.com ad.
10:10 Now, THAT is why I watch playoff games even when I don’t care!
10:16 Of course, the shout-outs to the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium do irritate.
Leadership
I signed up for a leadership course, taking place next week, for which I had to take the Myers-Briggs Temperament Sorter. I went in today for a little meeting thingy where we got the results and got talked to about them. (Very interesting, actually.)
So here I am on the internets, and I am looking at lists of careers for which I am well suited:
- Bounty hunter.
- Private investigator.
- CIA or FBI agent.
So basically, I was meant to spy on people and carry guns. I KNEW IT! Good thing I went to a liberal arts women’s college!
Along those lines, here’s some things I should NOT be:
- Poet. (Don’t I know it.)
- Child psychologist. (”GROW UP, KID!”)
- Video editor. (Should anyone be this?)
Also? Photographer. Hey! What’re you trying to say, anonymous poorly-designed webpage??!
Interestingly, the “yes” list has “professor” while the “no” list has “English professor.” How very true. (It was because of an English professor that I majored in the sciences.)
I am also not meant to own a bookstore. THAT I don’t get. I mean, I’d get to keep a gun behind the counter, wouldn’t I? For all those bookstore holdups?
Proof: rally caps
Faboo Cubs blog Bleed Cubbie Blue is whiling away the dark winter of the baseball fan’s soul (19 days left!) by counting down the top 20 Cubs home runs. Here is BCB Al’s number 18, a dinger I remember very well. You can find my stories about it in the comment thread for his post (search the page for techne). Non-baseball-y readers can click through to this picture’s flickr page for a shorter, less technical version. (Note to all: “Twitchy” is Sammy Sosa.)
In this photo Jake (l), Paulo (r), and I are sporting rally caps, a baseball technique. Some background: there’s a lot of superstitions in baseball, and one large subset of the superstitions involves changing or not changing things. You don’t change things if you are streaking–eat the same meal, sit in the same place on the plane, shave or don’t shave, do what my die-hard Cub fan middle school math teacher did during the 1989 playoff race and don’t change your socks. Likewise, if you are slumping, you need a slump-buster of some kind, from dietary to sartorial to, er, sexual.
This is the theoretical basis of the rally cap. Is your team behind? Do you need a rally? Clearly, what you have been doing in the game thus far is not working. So you mix it up and wear your cap backwards and inside out. Laugh all you like, but look at the picture and read the post/comment, people: rally caps WORK!
“But Techne,” you say, “I am still skeptical. And you are just a fan, anyway, shouldn’t it be players who would have to wear rally caps?” OK, smartass. You want more evidence? Listen to this! An internet (Wikipedia) tells us of two situations where players allegedly used rally caps:
- New York Mets, 1986 World Series
- Detroit Tigers, 1945 World Series
QED.
DCist Exposed 2!
This photo was chosen for the second annual DCist Exposed photography show, opening March 7!
Thanks DCist!
See you all there!
?!! Sexual innuendo much?!
Come on. I can’t be the only person who thought so when I heard this.
MODERATOR: The Nobel Prize-winning African-American author, Toni Morrison, famously observed about Bill Clinton, “This is our first black president, blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”
Do you think Bill Clinton was our first black president?
[blah blah]
OBAMA: I have to say that, you know, I would have to, you know, investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilities.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: You know, and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother. But…
(APPLAUSE)
MODERATOR: Let’s let Senator Clinton weigh in on that.
CLINTON: Well, I’m sure that can be arranged.
“OTHER STUFF“? That needs to be investigated? Like what, exactly? We already know about the fried chicken and the soul handshake (scroll to the end). And he DID marry a white girl. Hmm, what else could there be, I wonder?
I await the Message’s take on this.
Like omigod it is sooo cold! And: an apology to my friends.
I reeeeeeeeally try not to rag on DC for its weather-related skittishness. It’s just too goddamned easy, and boring. But, come the fuck on. Did people always make this big a deal out of 20 degree weather? 20 DEGREES. We’re not traversing Antarctica here. Wear a fucking hat.
It’s times like these I feel most Midwestern. I have five trusty Weather Dashboard widgets set up, one for each place in the country where I have family. The “Stepfather” one tells me that it’s 10degF in Michigan. The “Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle, and 3 Cousins” one tells me that it’s 1degF in Wisconsin. Now THAT is some weather, people. One fricking degree. My cousins — ages 7, 5, and 1 — are being raised RIGHT. That’s not “you can’t go out and play, because I’m cold” weather. That’s “you can’t go out to play because you will get frostbite” weather.
I am sure my sister disagrees. She never felt the cold to be character-building, although that may have been because in the Midwest she bark-coughs like a seal from November to March. So she moved to Northern California. Where it’s now 20 degrees. Neener, seester. (And to round everyone out, it’s also 20 degrees where my mom is. She was raised in the Midwest but is now in Connecticut. How bout it, momb? Are they wimpy about 20 degrees there too?)
I was unfortunate this evening, when, failing to turn the football game off in a timely fashion, a local newscast bounced some photons off my retinae. No worries, first-degree burns only, I changed it quickly…but not before I got a nice strong dose of schadenfreude watching a newsperson interview a shivering frat boy, wearing on his head only a baseball cap, who admitted that it is too cold to wear on his head only a baseball cap. I hope his boyz don’t see him on the news, because based on the aggressively-worn T-shirts I saw the frat boys sporting on the streets last night, admitting to feeling cold practically makes him gay.
In very sad news, my text messaging appears to be broken. I’m not sure how many days now. I am lost without text messages. Seriously. My Google Calendar texts me reminders (and God knows I need a lot of reminders, what with this sieve I call a brain). I already missed at least one, and I suspect two, social engagements because people are used to not having to call me. So, I apologize to all of youse whose messages I have missed. It probably hurts me more than it hurts you!
the coffeeshop matrix
Once, this blog broke ground with its characterization of the “Woo Girl.” The post made quite a splash, but as is common in science, following up is harder than it looks.
Let’s explore a new idea. I’ve been working more at coffeeshops the last few months and it is time to do a rigorous comparison. By which I mean, graphs. All we need is 3 variables, and we can graph coffeeshop quality. In 3-D And color. In 3-D color! Maybe even rotating 3-D color!! Doesn’t that thrill you? You can even pick the colors.
And all we need to make it happen is your data! In the comments, please classify DC-area coffeeshops that you know well on at least these three measures:
- Ambience
- Internets/work
- Fare
We can, of course, think of many other judging criteria: we could break any of those categories down into their own three subgroups, for example. But at a minimum please at least give a 1-10 rating on the above three factors for each establishment.
Here is an example.
CRUMBS AND COFFEE: Adams Morgan, on Columbia above 18th
- Ambience: 3. Fluorescent lighting, soft-rock music station, small, not terribly comfy chairs, fluorescent lighting, and does not make you feel all “I’m cool, I’m in a coffeshop, I have tattoos and a think tank job which lets me telecommute and I am blogging RIGHT NOW,” which another area cafe, which shall remain nameless, aims for. No, it doesn’t go for anything ambience-wise (which of course makes today’s creative class hipster feel an “I’m too cool to care about tattoos and blogging, and also, actual workmen who do actual work come in here every now and then which makes me feel like I am communing with the working class” ambience). In the plus column, smallness is such that it never really feels crowded, non-chatty counter service, large windows mitigate the lighting, and you’d be surprised how often a soft-rock-station tune will make you sing along or at least send you down memory lane.
- Internets: 6. Great free wi-fi which is on 7 days a week, unlike another area cafe, which shall remain nameless. Outlet situation moderate to good although some serious tripwire situations can occur (yay, MacBook Pro with the magnetic power dingus). Tables and counter a bit too high and close for comfort.
- Fare: 7. Ice cream as well as the regular array of pastry/sandwiches. Unpretentious selection but lackluster presentation. I don’t think I’ve actually had the coffee, I’m transitioning to tea…but I can report that they don’t use cereal-bowl-sized cups like another area mugs, which shall remain nameless. This is much of the reason for the high score, in fact. I hate those mugs with the passion of, hmm, let’s say 19 suns.
Let’s hear it! Science needs YOU!
Easily impressed, or, it’s the little things
PART ONE
No point in regaling you with the story of my holiday travels. You don’t care, and nothing bad/funny/interesting happened to me, anyway. So I’ll just tell you about the wine bar at BWI that restored my soul:
Click through and you can also read about how much I love Southwest. I even love the unassigned seats!
PART TWO
As I deplaned* at BWI, a boy no more than three years old caught sight of me. His eyes went wide, he pointed and yelled at the top of his lungs “aaaaah!!” Disconcerting. Then again, each time more and more excited: “Aaaaaaah!! AAAAAH!!”
I was the first adult around to figure it out: I was wearing my red Incredibles logo shirt.
I saw it last year, but you know, you forget exactly how it goes, and these things make bigger impressions on kids anyway. Having happened to catch it on network tonight**, however, I had a new appreciation of just how impressed that kid was.
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*What a dumb word.
**This is the first time I have watched a non-”Ten Commandments” movie on network this millennium. Or longer.
The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art?!
The knitted brain–holy shit. The quilt is groovy, but I’m a knitter, and I love the 3D aspect. No experience has been as important to my understanding of neuroscience and neuroanatomy as dissecting a brain in my first year of graduate school. Which is kind of “duh”, I know…but to handle a human brain every week, cut away pieces and really see how it was put together…
OMG! A zipper as the corpus callosum (the structure that links the left and right lobes of the brain). Bril.
There is a disclaimer:
While our artists make every effort to insure [sic] accuracy, we cannot accept responsibility for the consequences of using fabric brain art as a guide for functional magnetic resonance imaging, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, neurosurgery, or single-neuron recording.
Good thing they covered their asses there!
I found this page through MindHacks, a fun blog based on the O’Reilly book of the same name; both aim to provide “neuroscience and psychology tricks to find out what’s going on inside your brain.” And they do it well–I haven’t bought the book yet, but I paged through it a few years ago for a friend who asked me to vet the neuroscience, and IIRC I was impressed. Hardly a shock considering the publishing house, which is known in the tech world for its high quality.
Today the MindHacks folk featured Blue Jean Brain II by artist Lee Pirozzi.
Which reminded me of LAST week, when they had me humming “if I only had a brain handbag”:
Designer Jun Takashi has created a high fashion handbag, shaped like a brain. Why? You ask. Why not? I answer.
At this point I would like to make it clear that the idea that we only use 10% of our handbag is a myth.
Scientific studies have found that all of the handbag is in constant use, although some parts may be more active than others.
(I like how they debunk the ridiculous 10% myth. It might be true in the Angel from Montgomery sense*, but not in the neurological.)
The Wizard of Oz joke up there is that I have a lot of bags. By which I mean purses. I blame the DSW Shoe Warehouse in Chicago on Clark and Wellington, which was not only within easy reach of public transportation but had free parking. (I got a lot of shoes there too, but those are more socially acceptable, and I tend to purge shoes more as they age, but bags don’t wear out as fast.) I remember one day when I came home to Chicago Ex and said, “Look at this bag I bought!” “Oh good,” he said, “You needed more bags.” I was flattered that he’d noticed, a second later I figured out I was being teased. These days, with every new bag I acquire, Reaganite slightly-sardonically asks “So….is THIS one the Perfect Bag?” I have to explain that the perfect bag is a platonic ideal**, and that different needs require different bags, so no one bag can ever be perfect, so it is not an answerable question. He laughs at me anyway. Perhaps he has never taken philosophy.
Here is the ironic part: I have a dearth of luggage, the most useful type of bag. I also have no professional-looking bags for interviews and other sorts of days when I need to look like a grownup. Purses, purses everywhere, and not a one to take to San Diego for a conference.
I tried to take a picture of the closet that has most of my purses in it, but it didn’t really get the point across. I have them all hanging on racks and hooks on the back of my front/coat closet door, and well, let’s just say that the door basically has to be forced closed.
Maybe I should shoot each one and make a grid of them, or something. That WOULD help me purge, as some of them are probably embarrassing, stylewise. I could try to do them chronologically, then I would have an excuse.
You know, because I don’t have enough to do.
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**Have you ever noticed that every time the Platonic ideal idea is explained pedagogically, the teacher uses the example of a chair? 4 out of 4 times in my academic experience. Bizarre.
Sunday miscellaneous
– Why does Google still list itself as being beta??
–The sadness of losing DST and having it get dark earlier is mitigated for me by pomegranates. The Trader Joe’s in Chicago had the bad pomegranates while the Whole Paycheck had the best, but in DC up is down and black is white, and so yesterday at TJs I scored two huge, perfect, just-on-the-verge-of-overripeness 16-inch-softball-sized fruits.
I had my first pomegranate as an adult, I’m not sure how I was introduced, but bless you, whoever you were. This meant I was spared in my childhood from wondering how the fuck Penelope could go to Hades and eat only six pomegranate seeds. (I used to read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology a lot.) As friends can verify, once I discovered them I used to inhale them in one sitting. They would even use this for amusement: buy Techne a pomegranate and get contact joy.
These days, on the advice of a Lebanese friend and coworker, I am less gluttonous. She watched me devour one at lunch one day and showed me how good the seeds could be with a little salt, so now I butcher them into a tupperware thingy, salt them just right, spritz maybe a little lemon or lime juice, and eat the seeds with a spoon. This means three fruits can last me a week, instead of three days. Which is cheaper; jeez, I’m not that old and I remember when you could get ‘em for a dollar.
–Amy Winehouse on SNL next week! Have you SEEN the videos of her moving on stage? I have never seen anything so bizarre. Come off the crack honey, we miss you. (MOM: listen to that album before SNL!)
–Today I was reminded yet again of why I hate running in DC. Chicago is blessedly flat, but my neighborhood is on a hill, and all the quiet, smog-free streets run downhill and the busy ones go uphill. Whenever I get a leeeeeeeeetle bit of willpower to run outside, it gets torpedoed by this fact. Today I was extra-dumbass and ran in the spaghetti tangle of streets that is the Adams Mill area, and got stuck at the bottom of a hill just as I was getting tired. (The hill Dr. Birdcage used to live on.) Yes, I could run across the bridge, but I walk that way TWICE A FRICKING DAY, and I am so over it by now. (Hyuk!) I wish I had a good elevation map of my area so I could plan routes.
Where I’ve been, and about James Watson
OK, so I missed the first day of NaBloWriMo.
OK, so there ISN’T even a NaBlogWriMo.
I can challenge myself anyway, right?
So, I know you all are wondering…where’ve I been?
At conferences. Five weeks, four conferences, three involving overnight stays, two involving stays of more than one night, and one in the Western time zone. The biggest one was #2. I presented on the first day, in the plenary session after the introductory speaker, who was…Jim Watson. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Fifty years ago he and others divined the structure of DNA in a perfect storm of insight, ambition, office politics, and teamwork. Two weeks ago he ended his career in disgrace…but ENTIRELY PREDICTABLY, in a way that surprised ABSOLUTELY NOBODY WHO’D EVER MET HIM. And I’m gonna tell you why, and give you a front-row seat–literally–on his behavior.
When you are precocious enough to earn your BS at 19 and your Ph.D. at 22, ambitious enough that you decide at age 23 that you will solve the biggest scientific problem of the day, intelligent enough that you DO SO by age 25, and important enough to the field that the insight wins you a piece of a Nobel at age 34…well, this is not a recipe for modesty, and modest he’s never been. He has accomplished a lot with his scientific capital, such as starting the human genome project (until politics forced him out) and leading the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to prominence in the genetics field. But he has also not had to edit himself for nigh on 30 years, and got in the habit of blurting out ideas that…might not have always been appropriate. And as he’s veered into the crochety-old-man-with-cushy-job phase of life, he’s gotten more and more outrageous.
The race stuff he said wasn’t too far out of the ordinary for him–just two things were different. First, it was about race, not about ugly women or fat people or stupid people, as it’s been in the past. Considering genetics’ history with eugenics, this naturally sits more poorly with people than the other viewpoints, which are more easily laughed off. And secondly, he said it to a member of the press on a book tour, not to a room of star-struck scientists whose reaction to him, for decades, has been “*roll eyes* That’s Jim!”
I went to three genetics conferences, which got progressively more general. The first one, featuring my BIG PRESENTATION (a whole other post), was the World Congress on Psychiatric Genetics, in NYC this year–a grand name for a medium-sized meeting of 1000 people. As I said, Watson opened it with a half hour or so of chat. (I was in the front row, hence your front-row view :).) Remember, this was PRE-brouhaha, although listen carefully to his media interviews up to that point and you’ll hear previews of what was to come. And indeed, this meeting was a preview. He was talking to, you know, psychiatric geneticists, so his comments focused on that instead of, say, race or attractiveness. What we do is so important, he sez. So many families have pain over this sort of issue. he himself has a schizophrenic son and a friend has a bipolar son who killed himself. Our field is heading in great directions, and being an old man he hopes we can develop, say, tests for psychiatric disorders…in a time-frame he can witness! (audience chuckling.) Such test scould be ever so useful, he goes on. For families, you know, and prenatal diagnosis.
Excueeze me? I baking powder? Prenatal diagnostic testing for MENTAL ILLNESS?
We’re not talking about horridly painful diseases that kill all affected kids before they turn 3 or whatever. We’re not even talking about Down Syndrome or Huntington’s Disease–diseases for which the genetic tests are definitive, but in which people can and do live full lives by almost any standard you apply. We’re talking about illnesses with unknown cause–illnesses where reasonable experts may not even agree on whether a person HAS it or not!
I was livid, as you can probably tell, and for two reasons. First: we have no idea what is going on genetically in these disorders. Take it from me, because I just published a major study in the area and spent 3 weeks absorbing the work others have been doing, and I can tell you for sure that knowing all the genetic everything that we know right now about someone will predict their odds of illness no better than will taking a simple family history. OK, I know that was a confusing sentence, so, an example. We know that if you have an aunt with schizophrenia, your odds of being schizophrenic yourself are one to four times higher than the general population’s odds. The absolutely MOST MOST optimistic spin on the genetics we know right now can’t do better than odds of 2. That means that just by asking for a family history, you can know more than if you do a genetic test. (Yes, some people don’t have anyone in their family with the illnesses…but this is rarer than you might think, especially once you start digging, and hear tell of that weird great-aunt who spent her life in a home or the boisterous cousin with the 5 divorces and so on.)
The second reason is, well…I had been to the Holocaust Museum the week before this conference, and seen this exhibit. (A summary: “The ‘Law for the prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases,’ proclaimed July 14, 1933, forced the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, such as mental illness (schizophrenia and manic depression), retardation (’congenital feeble-mindedness’), physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism.”) It was a hell of a juxtaposition.
I felt conflicted after his talk. Sure, we scientists knew to roll their eyes, but the guy had a LOT of credibility among influential people, and there is already pressure in certain privately-funded corners of psychiatry to develop “definitive” psychiatric diagnostic tests. The imprimatur of a guy like him, I imagined, could mean a lot to decisionmakers–it had done a lot for the Human Genome Project, after all. What could I, a lowly postdoc, do? Where did my power lie? Anywhere??
So I was actually pretty glad that Watson dug his own hole. He’s not the first prominent person to shoot himself in the foot like this…the dude IS 80. It’s an unfortunate end to an amazing, and, personally, inspiring career, but I think–I hope–history will be kind.
Next time: How Did Techne’s Talk Go??
(Preview: They laughed, they cried, it was better than Cats)
NaBlogWriMo?
NaNoWriMo for blogs…..
Born in Manhattan. Raised in Chicago. Now living in Adams Morgan in DC. I’m a scientist/postdoc at the NIMH.
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